The Sedona City Council is requesting that the Sedona Chamber of Commerce hit the pause button on destination marketing for the next year. Time will tell if it will have the desired effect that many in the area have been seeking.
But even those on council are not so sure.
“I’m in favor of a pause for one year on marketing and we’ll still have to define what that is,” Mayor Sandy Moriarty said. “I, personally, don’t believe it’s going to change very much but the public believes with every fiber of their being that that’s [marketing] making all the difference. It will prove whether or not it really does and maybe it will give us a chance to catch up.”
It was standing room only during the council’s work session Wednesday, April 28, in which the chamber’s discussed its Fiscal Year 2021-22 budget.
Many in the audience were there to support halting chamber marketing spending for a year while others were there believing council was considering cutting all funding to the chamber, which was never an option but rather misinformation spread throughout Sedona.
No official vote was taken but the consensus among those on council was that it was best to eliminate all paid marketing by the chamber for a year and revisit the issue during Fiscal Year 2022-23 discussions. The chamber will come back before council later this spring with its draft budget.
While council is requesting a pause, many on the dais stressed by that they appreciate the long-standing relationship between the city and chamber and that the blame should not be placed on the chamber for the visitor-related issues the city has been facing recently, which includes traffic, trailhead trash and parking.
A report from the city states that for the third year in a row, council’s annual priorities retreat included convening with the chamber’s key staff and board. At that retreat, council agreed that the chamber should focus funds and efforts on sustainable tourism, not destination marketing.
The city continues to receive feedback from residents that the level of tourism is not in balance with the desires of the community.
Some residents at the meeting said they feel that their quality of life is being negatively affected by excessive tourism.
A year ago, fear of massive job losses and concern about reduced travel as a result of COVID-19 spurred the chamber to seek additional destination marketing funds in an effort to bolster an economic recovery. While the chamber initially prepared for the likelihood that tourism would not return to previous historic levels throughout the FY21 fiscal year, council voted last year to place $544,440 of the chamber’s marketing fund request into a contingency fund — which the chamber never used.
The report goes on to state that the recovery was more robust and swifter than anyone could have anticipated. For February, the most recent month for which the city has data, sales tax revenue was up 32%, and bed tax revenue was up 39%. Year-to-date through February, sales tax was up 14%, and bed tax was up 23%.
In spite of the pandemic, this represents the highest first eight months of the fiscal year that the city has ever seen.
“We find ourselves in a fairly unique situation,” Chamber President and CEO Candace Carr Strauss said during her presentation. “Despite the continued impact of the global pandemic, Sedona is a thriving destination. When we met on Feb. 4 [joint meeting with the city] we talked about being grounded in our mutual purpose — the greater good of Sedona for all of her placeholders.”
Strauss then addressed some of the rumors and misconceptions that have been spreading recently about the chamber, its budget and marketing plan. She stressed that the information in the city’s packet, which can be viewed online, are the current fiscal year’s figures, which were approved last June. She pointed to a website that went live four days prior to the meeting called Save Our Sedona, which she said “is completely false” and “caused a lot of stress for a lot of people” because the website referenced the current budget and not next year’s plan.
During public forum, Save Our Sedona creator Debra Stangl, the owner of a spiritual retreat and destination tour business, said the chamber has done a “fantastic job” of bringing people to Sedona but that she and others feel “enough is enough and, when is too much, too much?”
The website is not affiliated with the Save Our Sedona political action committee of a former 2020 mayoral candidate.
Stangl also said her website has never said the city should cancel the entire contract with the chamber. And, she pointed out that there’s a big difference being paying to market the area and the free marketing done through social media.
This was expressed by many of the 15 residents who spoke at council.
“We have to be looking at that kind of media, which is going out to hundreds of thousands of people,” said Stangl, a chamber member for 19 years for her destination tour business. “We can’t control whether that’s in Phoenix or Tucson. It [social media] is going out all over the place.”
Strauss said during the pandemic hotel occupancy has been down compared to the previous year but average daily rates during that time has continued to rise. She said this means that fewer people have been coming to stay but those who do are willing to spend more money during their time here.
“That’s a positive thing,” she said. “It’s not about more, more, more — it’s about the right person who’s going to respect our values as a community and a destination and treat it the way we want it treated, while also helping our underlying economy.”
Short-term vacation rentals, a topic that came up several times during the three-and-a-half hour meeting, was what Strauss focused on next. She said that since Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed Senate Bill 1350 in 2017, it “essentially unleashed a 2,500-room hotel on the city of Sedona.” From monthly data, she said there are 1,216 short-term rental units in the Sedona area that includes the Village of Oak Creek and Oak Creek Canyon.
Of those, 876 are listed as whole-home rentals and using a figure of 2.9 bedrooms per each home, condo and townhouse, Strauss came up with the 2,500 figure.
Strauss pointed out that from 2013 to the present, Sedona hotels have been at around 80% capacity during peak times of the year and 42% to 50% during slower times, which is when the chamber focuses its marketing.
“The negative impact came in 2017 with the governor deregulating short-term vacation rentals,” she said, noting that chamber marketing is not the cause of the recent increase in tourism. “I’m all about taking accountability for my actions as president and CEO of our organization, but these things are out of our control. Now, we’re just trying to mitigate yet we’re the ones with the target on our back.”
